GoKawiilJuly 2026 – It’s been called the greatest wealth transfer in history. But how big will it be? Pick a number, any number: $110 trillion? $124 trillion? The answer depends on who is counting and what they are measuring, which creates noise but not necessarily clarity on what matters: how much will be passed down and how will it impact consumer spending.
Here is what we know: baby boomers are sitting on at least $93 trillion in assets (see figure below). That’s more than the total held by Gen X and millennials combined. To put that into context, U.S. GDP was roughly $31 trillion in 2025, which means boomer assets are more than three times the size of the economy. But not all $93 trillion will make it to heirs, and even less will be spent. Imagine you are sitting on a winning lottery ticket. You hit the jackpot, but you immediately lose half by—smartly—taking the lump sum. Next, you lose another 30–40 percent through taxes and fees. The advertised jackpot is enormous, but after the lump-sum haircut, taxes and fees, the take‑home number is much lower. A similar dynamic applies to the great wealth transfer.
New research from Visa Business and Economic Insights finds that $36 trillion in baby boomer wealth will pass to Gen X and millennial heirs over the next 20 years after subtracting liabilities, excluding the top 1 percent of households (the outliers in how they spend their wealth), and accounting for retirement spending, charitable bequests, taxes and fees. That is a little over one‑third of the $93 trillion headline figure, and by our estimate the amount spent will be smaller still at $8 trillion,* because most households receiving an inheritance are already affluent and likely to save or invest much of what they receive. Even so, that roughly $8 trillion still has meaningful implications at the spending‑category level, especially in housing and travel, where support is already arriving through down‑payment assistance, skip‑generation vacations and similar wealth transfers happening now rather than far off in the future.